


learning experiences

by starryvin



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Getting Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 15:37:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16813543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starryvin/pseuds/starryvin
Summary: A collection of snapshots detailing how, exactly, a scientist and an assassin might fall for each other.Ongoing but technically complete /shrugs there's no method to this madness.





	1. choosing responsibility

For all her idealism and good intentions, Irikah doesn't go blind into what she and Thane are forming. She is a scientist after all -- as soon as she realizes what she has gotten herself into she starts her meticulous research, asking Thane all kinds of quite invasive questions (which the other drell always answers calmly, like it's no big deal) and then reading up on psychology. Mostly about child soldiers, although Thane doesn't fit the bill exactly.

(At the same time she realizes that appallingly little is known about the effect of the Compact on children's psychology and that she knows a few people she could perhaps point to that direction -- she is no psychologist but someone needs to at least do a survey.)

But all of that. All of that is useless when the man scares away her assistants and yet shies away himself as soon as Irikah so much as touches him in a way that is not strictly professional.

"Like a rescue dog, that friend of yours," a fellow researcher from Earth, Alexej, says once. "So much trauma and fear."  
She doesn't know if the comparison is accurate since she has never met a rescue dog, but at least the description fits. Underneath the hanar-like poise Thane is, indeed, a tight-wound ball of anxiety, danger, and trauma.

The others perhaps do not understand just how very unusual the man is. They see the trauma and danger, yes. But some of his behaviour is also less bizarre than that of a typical drell. As a small species rarely seen in Citadel space, they seem odd to many, their customs and even biological or neurological traits are simply weird for your average asari or turian or anyone other than the hanar.

But Thane is much more like the Council species. He rarely slips into memory, at least audibly. His frills don't move when he is angry or excited or startled. He doesn't lick his lips when nervous; he barely does any licking at all. He is not fiercely loyal to a select few and more or less indifferent about everyone else. (All right, so she is also a little bit of an exception to that rule but so what?) Irikah isn't sometimes even certain if he excretes the same little drops of venom as everyone else. (He must, right? If he doesn't, she is going to undertake that damn survey herself.)

And the culmination of it all is when she realizes that she has fallen for this dangerous, difficult, aloof, and just stupidly weird man.

Bad drell, she tells herself. You're a bad drell. You're supposed to be damn furious. Anyone would be, drell or not. And especially a member of a generally timid, non-social species.

"He's not your responsibility," Alexej tells her once and she cannot explain why he is wrong but just… she just knows that he is. When she did not immediately call her mech to eliminate the threat, the threat became her responsibility.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so salty we never got to know much about Irikah. I mean, she's orange, how cute is that??
> 
> Also, made up some bullshit about the drell cause why not? Besides I needed some hook for Irikah to be like *curiosity intensifies*


	2. dealing with open windows

The first time he notices the window is left open, Thane assumes it is a mistake. It is three nights after their first meeting and he doesn't quite feel equal to bothering Irikah about it, especially when the woman is just putting up with him, still trying to vet him. He just closes it and goes on with his day.

The second time, he closes it with a little more force. Bolts it, too. The security merch clanks over and asks him if everything is all right.

"Close the windows," he tells it. He still doesn't say anything to Irikah.

The third time, he brings it up because it is the third morning and the window has been open three nights in a row.

"You should remember to close all your windows, sera."

"I like the fresh night air," Irikah mumbles into her coffee. "I work all night, I need some oxygen in here."

That is not the response he is expecting. Just the idea that someone who evidently is viciously hunted by thugs wanting to trash her lab and stop her research by hurting her should keep her windows open simply because she likes the fresh night air...

The mech assistant cuts him off before he can say anything else.

"Do you require a stimulant?"

"I'm drinking coffee," Irikah says. "Last time I washed one of those down with coffee I had palpitations so terrible that I thought I was having a heart attack." She stares into her cup. "Yes, please."

"No," Thane says. "No, you can't. It's dangerous."

She fixes him with a glare and he is vividly reminded of _sunset-coloured eyes defiant in the scope_ \--

"...have absolutely no business telling me what I am supposed to do," she is saying as he comes to. She reaches over the table, shoving him in the shoulder. "If I want to drink coffee spiced with stims I damn well will."

"I advice against mixing caffeine with stimulants," the mech says. "Excessive amount of stimulating substances can cause a hazard to your cardiovascular and neurological health."

Irikah doesn't stop glaring and Thane swallows his pride; he looks down because Irikah seems like she is actually going to do it if he continues to challenge her. Just out of spite.

The fourth time the window is open he can't keep his mouth shut.

"Sera," he addresses Irikah as she is dozing off at her microscope, the ever-present coffee mug next to her. The mug says _Medi-Gel® for sleep-deprivation_.

"What?" she asks curtly and turns to him.

"You should keep the windows shut."

"I want to see those stupid turians climbing through windows," Irikah says and dismisses him with a wave of her hand.

"It is dangerous," Thane says louder. "You have to keep the windows shut!"

"Do I look like I care?" Irikah snaps and actually discards her work to stomp closer to him. She is shorter than him but stockier and surprisingly intimidating. "I care about the research."

"So close the windows," Thane says.

"Well, you're here anyway so what's the point?" Irikah asks and actually jabs a finger in his chest. "You need to get off my case and start doing... whatever it is that you do all day. Or better yet, go stalk someone else!"

He is not prepared for how deep that strikes. He steps back and she takes another step forth, not letting him retreat. She is backing him against the wall where the window stands shut. He can't say anything as his back hits the cool plaster.

"I do what I want in my own lab," Irikah says deceptively softly. "Be it developing vaccines or breathing fresh air." Then she reaches a hand towards his face and he knows six different ways to stop her, ranging from non-painful to breaking all of the bones beneath her elbow. Instead he presses himself even tighter against the wall.

Irikah smiles sweetly at him and reaches behind him, then clicks the bolt out of place. Shoves the window open.

"The window stays open," she says. "If you don't like it, you're free to climb out through it and close it behind you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I have constructed such an elaborate image of Irikah in my head that she is bordering on being an OC.
> 
> 2\. My logic:  
> siha = female angel  
> sere = male honorific  
> sera = female honorific  
> (sihe = male angel, probably. if I ever need it.)


	3. understanding fleeting things

"So, a siha, huh?" The first words Irikah has said since the assassin showed up at her lab this morning. She had simply nodded her greeting and approval and gone back to work. But now, as Krios stands off to the side and seems deceptively tranquil, she cannot keep her mouth shut anymore.

"I thought it obvious," Krios replies.

"We are talking about the same thing, right? Arashu's warrior-angels, right?" Irikah asks because although everything about this man confuses her to a degree, this fixation on seeing her as a figure larger than life takes the cake. She barely ever gives two thoughts to Arashu. Motherhood, protection, love… all of these have always felt distant to her. And she sure doesn't think herself equal to the job of one of her damn enforcers. Her goddess is Rayeh of knowledge and curiosity and understanding. She has no grand avengers.

"Who else's?" Krios asks. Then he seems to understand that she is confused about his reasons. "Sera, I could have well shot you and then the man you were protecting."

She looks down at her hands. She keeps her mouth shut as she remembers the brief contact they had before she realized who the man was. His hands had held hers, shockingly cold, almost clammy. Fundamentally unfamiliar in the touch of a drell.

"Weren't you raised by the hanar?" she asks to divert the conversation from a truth that she herself is only beginning to realize, though she suspects Krios knows it well. That the fact that she is still here is a miracle worth revering. That if she'd so much as jumped in a second too late, it might have been too late to stop the trigger finger from pulling. She shakes her head, taps into the blinding anger and disregard for consequences that made her stare down an invisible killer. She looks up. "How do you even know about anything else than the Enkindlers?"

"The Compact doesn't forbid curiosity," Krios says. A wry smile dances across his lips -- he is often asked the same thing, Irikah interprers. "Nor does it force the hanar religion on us. I remembered the old gods my parents spoke of and kept them in my heart."

Irikah frowns at her table like it could easily explain Thane Krios to her but simply refuses to.

"So, if I am a siha," she asks and looks up, still frowning and suspicious, though she does not know of what, "then what are you?"

Krios looks thoughtful. Then one corner of his lips quirks up and he reveals a row of thin, sharp teeth, the kind of a grin she loves to see in others. He looks so young, she realizes. He can't be, Rayeh take her, he can't be much over twenty and he looks so dangerous and so beautiful that her breath stops.

"I am the Enkindlers' will made manifest."

She feels so weak so suddenly that she has to brace herself against the table and hope those sharp eyes do not notice.

She is not proud of the fact that the very evening of that day that grin and those almost arrogant words (of a damn murderous _teenager_ ) white out her mind in the middle of dinner with her flatmate. Mhairi smirks knowingly, as only a salarian can, but says nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone said Thane was like twenty or so when they met. I took that and ran away with it.


	4. accepting help

Irikah is, as Thane is forced to learn, stupidly brave. She is the kind of a person who does nothing to hide what she feels. Her sheer fearlessness is two things: incredible and exasperating. Incredible because Thane has never known someone as willing to stand up for what they believe in, no matter the consequences. His profession is all about leaving personal issues behind and never picking a fight on a principle, about hiding one's true self and instead offering people what they wish to see, and he is daily blown away by his siha's willingness to put herself in harm's way.

Exasperating because it makes his job as her self-appointed body guard difficult.

Irikah must have by now understood why Thane is hanging around her like he is, always glancing around and following her like a watch dog to every little meeting she may have with a Mr. Probably Not Dangerous or a Mrs. May Resort To Extortion. He takes the fact that she hasn't said anything as an agreement that his presence is not unwelcome and so he continues. Surprisingly many people are out to get her and he is positively gleeful to be able to be there to thwart their plans and dispose of them.

In a strictly professional manner, of course.

He treats it like any other assignment and it is no surprise when Irikah brings up paying him for it.

"Look, Thane," she says when they exit the office of one C-Sec operative who has been stonewalling her requests to be moved somewhere with CCTV, somewhere where it would not be so damn easy to sneak into her lab and mess up her research. "If you're following me like a body guard and intimidating people like a body guard, perhaps you should also get paid for it like a body guard."

"I do not need payment to do this," Thane says.

"Where in the blazes do you sleep?" Irikah asks angrily. "What do you eat? Because it sure as fuck doesn't seem like you have anywhere stable to live."

"Being an assassin does not go well with stability," Thane says. "I get by."

"You're... how old are you again?" She makes a stop at a little coffee stand.

"Most drell separate from their parents young," Thane says. "You know this."

"How old, Thane?" Irikah hisses low enough that the barista doesn't hear her. In almost the same breath she raises her voice to order: "Two hot chocolates."

"Twenty-one," Thane says. Irikah makes a disgusted sound.

"And you've been on your own for…?"

"Nine years," Thane says.

Irikah knocks down a tower of paper cups with her frills as her head snaps around to look at him. The human behind the counter looks annoyed and Thane shoots him a warning glare.

"Since twelve." It is not a question. The human hands her their drinks and she shoves one into Thane's hand.

"You're angry," Thane observes.

"Fuck yeah!" Irikah snaps.

Thane gets nothing more out of her.

"You never did tell me where you sleep."

Thane is not overtly good at social cues. They are something not easily taught, something to be learned from experience, and he has not tried much. But he can tell that Irikah is still looking for a fight and that he perhaps should not tell her the truth.

"You do not need to worry about it, sera," he says.

"I didn't ask if I need to worry about it. Tell me," Irikah says. She is standing in the doorway to her apartment, light streaming out around her. She actually doesn't look angry, like she had before; there's a different emotion in her eyes. Thane doesn't know what it is. He looks away from her.

"There is a homeless shelter in the Wards."

Irikah is silent for a while. Her hand clenches on the door handle. She is unmoving.

"I have a spare mattress," she says finally. "I know the place and I know that you are not going back there. Get your things. I have a flatmate but she won't mind. Might tease me. She's a salarian. Mhairi."

Thane opens his mouth to argue.

"I can't even breathe down there," Irikah says. "It's practically in a sewer. It's so far from healthy for your lungs it's not even funny."

"Siha," Thane starts.

"You can keep me safe more effectively if you are here with me," Irikah says. "How about that? I don't really care what the reason is as long as you don't go back down there." She walks down the steps leading to the door. The halo disappears as she closes the door. "I'll help you carry your things."


	5. taking steps forward

The first time they take it a step further is honestly later than Irikah expected. "It" of course being the unbearable tension between them, the long stares and fleeting touches and meaningful words (and the teasing, oh, all the teasing Irikah has to endure from her coworkers).

She is the one who breaks first because Thane is raised by the hanar (which means that he is emotionally stunted and overtly polite, though outwardly well-adjusted). He's nothing if not a gentleman, but the problem is that Irikah is nowhere near a gentle woman.

So she is the one who eventually snaps. Pushes Thane against the door he has just closed and kisses him like… like she has wanted to do for so long. She has dreamed of this, hungered for it, and now she has it and Thane is kissing back, just like she has imagined.

And her stupid, manic brain steps in.

"If you're doing this only because you feel that you owe me something…"

Thane presses a finger against her lips to silence her, then kisses her high on her cheeks, first left and then right.

"I am not, I assure you," he says. "And that you felt the need to ask just makes me want this even more, siha."

Irikah all but slaps his hand away and clings to him like a pyjak. Distantly she is aware that she is ridiculous, but she is too far gone for that. Thane demonstrates similiar sentiments by reaching behind her knees and actually lifting her up like she weighs nothing and… well. She gasps and then moans and then everything sort of… blows up. Slowly. Like a star, exploding and then cooling down into the darkness.

That night is the first time she hears Thane laugh. She is scrambling for condoms she hasn't needed for months, or has it been a year, and Thane is sitting on her bed, shirt off and pants open and it is frankly illegal how delicious he looks even if she can't see all of him because she'd stupidly insisted they turn the lights off.

Finally she feels the cool foil under her fingers and triumphantly yanks the string of three condoms out of the drawer. She must look silly when she turns back towards the bed because Thane laughs at her.

"Well done, siha," he teases and she feels warm all the way through. His voice is lower than usual, hot and purring, and Irikah's knees go weak. She only just makes it back to the bed, back into Thane's lap.

"More," she blurts out. "You should laugh more." Thane silences her with a kiss, condoms plucked out of her hand.

She distantly realizes she is being distracted as Thane rolls them over and kisses her neck, but it doesn't quite feel important.

In the afterglow they lay in each other's arms, legs tangled and her nose pressed into the nape of his neck. "Why don't you ever laugh?" she finally asks.

"Sleep, siha," he murmurs.


End file.
